In an automated manufacturing facility, it is important to dynamically fulfill a customer's product order within a customer requested due date. This need increases in importance in manufacturing facilities produce large volumes of advanced technology products such as a wafer or semiconductor manufacturing facility. In such a volatile business as wafer fabrication facility it is important to fulfill a customer order as close to a customer's requested due date as possible to avoid customer dissatisfaction in an ever increasing competitive market.
Typically, existing order promising systems within a wafer fabrication facility do not have the capability to accurately fulfill a customer's order on a customer requested date or within a time period that a customer requests. Instead, forecasts are generated to predict future order demands. However, the forecasts are not based on real-time events relating to facility operations, but instead are based on past practices, data and experiences of facility operations and facility personnel. Existing forecasting systems do not provide a dynamic feedback system to determine allocated capacity and constraints within a manufacturing facility. Thus, using an existing system a fabrication facility's processing capacity cannot be fully utilized in an efficient manner.
Typically, existing systems do not accommodate processing capacity constraints within a fabrication facility. Thus when a particular customer's order falls within a plurality of variable technology groups, the order may violate processing capacity restraints within the fabrication facility and adversely impact orders requests by different customers. Thus, the existing forecast systems do not accurately reflect a wafer fabrication facility's actual capacity constraints in situation where a customer places an order different than a forecasted order, or where a customer requests a variable product mix order.
It is desirable to provide an automated supply chain management system and a method of use of an automated supply chain management system to automatically fulfill a customer order on-time within a customer requested due date.